Networking services have become increasingly important in today's society. One feature of networking services relates to client or source awareness. Certain services, functions, or capabilities may be provided to a group of end users or to clients based on the identity of the end users or on a corresponding source profile. Devices or components within a network must generally be able to identify an end user or a source profile before offering selected enhanced services, functions, or capabilities to the end user. Accordingly, sufficient information must be made available at various networking layers in order to allow for the accurate identification of a client or a source.
In some environments, the source identification may be hidden or otherwise transformed such that the original source or end user is hidden from the perspective of the destination point that receives a message. This may result in a device or a component that receives the message being unable to determine a point of origin associated with a data request. This blindness or shielding creates a problem in attempting to offer services to certain end users. In some instances, the inability to determine the origination of a data flow precludes a device or a component from offering services such as priority, content filtering, and accounting operations, which may all be based on the identity of an end user.